Abortionrights protests block city streets
WARSAW: Tens of thousands of Poles blocked city streets in cars, on bicycles and on foot yesterday on the fifth day of protests against a Constitutional Court ruling that amounts to a neartotal ban on abortion in the predominantly Catholic country.
Carrying banners reading ‘‘Enough’’, ‘‘I won’t be your martyr’’ and ‘‘I want choice, not terror’’, protesters gathered in several dozen towns and cities in defiance of coronavirus restrictions.
‘‘I will be here until the end,’’ said Piotr Wybanski (31) in Warsaw. Speaking of his five sisters, mother and grandmother, he said: ‘‘I came here with my fiancee and I fight for all of them.’’
Scuffles erupted between protesters and farright groups who broke through a police cordon separating them in front of a church elsewhere in Warsaw, prompting the police to use pepper spray.
In the city of Wroclaw, abortion rights activists used flares.
The government has called for a halt to the protests because of a rising number of coronavirus cases overwhelming the healthcare system, though the protests have been largely peaceful.
More protests are planned across Poland later this week. — Reuters